Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

“That’s not saying much for you,” I said.

  “No, really. Anton’s the real deal, got a mind for numbers like a computer. And don’t ever bet him in chess, he’s a prodigy or something. He’s got a ranking. I didn’t know they gave rankings, but he’s got one.”

  “How high?” I asked.

  “Nineteen fifty as of my last tournament,” he said through his twisted set of teeth.

  “Impressive,” I said, and from the way he said it I guess it was, though I had no idea what it meant.

  “He’s almost a master,” said Jimmy. “Imagine that, and he works for me.”

  “Anything going?” asked Anton.

  “Rocketman bet thirty units on Houston.”

  “He would,” said Anton.

  “Other than that, Victor put on the kibosh so I think it’s going to be quiet. You got that match to study for, go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow after the procedure.”

  Anton looked at Jimmy like he wanted to say something, his eyes behind the glasses widened, then he looked away.

  “It’s nothing,” said Jimmy. “Just a procedure is all. Get the hell out of here and study. In two days I’ll let you start me on that exercise program you been ramming me about.”

  Anton smiled. “They’re waiting for you at Gold’s.”

  “I’ll bet they are, those bastards. I’ll show them something. I can bench a horse.”

  “You can eat a horse maybe,” I said, “but that’s about it.”

  “Get out of here,” said Jim. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Anton nodded for a moment, looked at me and nodded, stared some more at Jim, and then left.

  “He worries about me too much, but he’s a good kid,” said Jimmy. “Keeps everything in his head now so there won’t be no more ledgers should the cops come looking again.”

  “You trust him with that much information?”

  “Like a son.”

  “Good,” I said, “Because I’d hate to have to cross-examine a chess master at your next criminal trial. All right then, so you went to Calvi to collect what Eddie Shaw owed you.”

  “Met him at Tosca’s,” said Jimmy. “He was smoking a cigar and I almost gagged as I sat across from him. I have craps smell better than his cigars. I told him my problem and he said he’d apply some pressure. Strong-arm stuff, but nothing too radical. Raffaello doesn’t go for that. He sent some boys up, sent the message, talked to the family, talked to the staff, made sure everyone knew the situation. I heard they got a little rough. Next thing I know Shaw paid off. Half of what he owed, which is all I needed to get myself clear. Had to increase my payout to Raffaello, you know, a collection charge, but it was worth it, got me off the hook. And you want to know something, that crazy loser is betting again. Just last night he took the Lakers and seven for a thousand.”

  “What happened?”

  “Bulls blew them out by twenty-five.”

  “And what about the sister?” I asked.

  “What about who?”

  “Shaw’s sister.”

  Jimmy shrugged, a wholly unconcerned shrug, as loose as a 275-pound man lying on his back in a hospital before surgery can shrug. “What about her?”

  “She died just before her brother started paying you back. Some in her family think she was murdered.”

  “Who? By me? That’s a laugh.”

  “Not so funny if it’s true.”

  “Why would I care about the sister?”

  “You don’t think Calvi might have hurt the sister as a warning for Eddie?”

  “What, are you crazy? His boys broke Shaw’s arm in two places with the blunt end of an ax, threatening to use the blade side if he didn’t pay up. Now that’s a warning. Hey, we got to get tough sometimes, but we’re not animals. What do you think?”

  What I thought was that he was telling me the truth, which was a relief because I liked Jimmy Dubinsky and I’d hate to think that someone I liked was a murderer. So Jimmy had gone to Calvi and Calvi had broken Eddie Shaw’s arm in two places and suddenly Eddie had found the money to pay back Jimmy. Where? That seemed to be the crucial question.

  “All right, Jimmy,” I said. “Thanks for your help. This thing tomorrow, it’s not dangerous, is it?”

  “A piece of cake,” he said. “Roto-Rooter, that’s the name and away go troubles down the drain. I’ll be here for three more days. You’ll visit again?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll bring me another little gift?”

  “I thought you were Slim-Fasting.”

  “You’re allowed one reasonable meal a day. It says it right there on the can.”

  “Sure, I’ll bring a gift if you want,” I said.

  “And next time, Victor, be a sport and buy them by the sack.”

  My car was still at the meter, when I stepped outside the hospital, still with its tires, still with its radio, still with its battery firmly in place, all of which was a pleasant surprise. It was back in my office where the unpleasant surprise awaited.

  11

  “THEY JUST WENT IN,” said Ellie, her hands fluttering about her neck. “I tried to stop them.”

  “That’s all right, Ellie. Where’s Beth?”

  “At a settlement conference. I was the only one here.”

  “You did fine,” I said. “I’ll take care of it now.” Ever since I began representing criminals I had made a practice of locking up my most sensitive files, but still I didn’t like visitors free to roam about my office alone, didn’t fancy utter strangers rifling the papers on my desk, the files in my drawers, eyeing which case opinions I was studying in preparation for my court appearances.

  “I didn’t know if I should call the police,” said Ellie. “They said it was about business.”

  “No, you did the right thing. I don’t want the police in my office either.”

  “The little one’s creepy looking, like a troll.”

  “It’s fine, Ellie,” I said, staring at the closed door, screwing up my courage to enter my own office. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “An evil troll.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a falsely confident smile. “In that case, you better hold my calls.”

  I took three steps forward and opened the door.

  Two guys. One was tall, dark, and squinty, dressed all in black, with one of those faux-cool ponytails that tries to say, “Hey, I’m hip,” but which really only says, “Hey, I’m a geek trying oh so hard to be hip.” He was concentrating on my tall file cabinet with the vase of dead flowers still perched on top. The cabinet was brown with fake wood grain, fireproof, batterproof, burglarproof, made of heavy-gauge steel for the most security-minded file keepers, and the ponytailed guy was fiddling noisily with the lock. The other guy, short and bearded, with the nasty eyes of a psychiatrist, was sitting at my desk, reading a document he had found there. The sheer brazenness of their actions was comforting, in a way. The most serious dangers, I have learned painfully through my ransacked life, come disguised as gifts.

  I cleared my throat like a schoolteacher in an unruly class. The two men stopped what they were doing, looked up at me, and then immediately went back to work.

  “Finding anything of interest?” I asked.

  “Not really, no,” said the little man. His voice was a natural falsetto. I guess if I was five foot three with a voice like that I’d grow a beard too. “Your desk is a mess. Is all your life this disorganized?”

  “Cluttered desk, uncluttered mind.”

  “Somehow I don’t think so.”

  “We have a problem, Mr. Carl,” said the man in black, in a pretentious husky whisper that went all too well with that ponytail. He was still standing by the file cabinet but apparently had given up his attempt to pick the Chicago Lock Company lock and peek inside. His face was deeply lined and though I had first thought him to be somewhere in his twenties, on closer inspection I believed him to be somewhere in his forties, which made his cry-for-hip outfit all the more pathetic. “We thi
nk you can help.”

  “Well, I’m a lawyer. Helping is my business.”

  That brought a yelp of mirth from the little man.

  “Why don’t you gentlemen sit down where the clients are supposed to sit and I’ll sit behind the desk, where the lawyer is supposed to sit, and maybe then we can discuss your situation.”

  The tall man looked at the short man. The short man stared at me for a moment before giving the tall man the nod. Then we all do-si-doed one around the other like a set at a square dance. When we were in our proper positions, I appraised the two men sitting across from me and found myself very unafraid, which I didn’t think was their intention.

  I guess it was the dealing with all those murderous mob hoodlums in the last few years that did it. It wasn’t that I had turned brave from my association with them. I had been born a coward, raised a coward, and faithfully remained a coward. It was part and parcel of being my father’s son and I would have taken great pride in my cowardice if I didn’t realize it only meant that in my thirty sorry years I hadn’t yet found a cause or a love worth dying for. No, I wasn’t frightened by these two men who had barged into my office in what they had hoped was an intimidating style because my experience with the more vicious elements of the city’s underworld had given me the capacity to judge the truly sadistically vicious from the bad-boy wannabees. The geezer in black, he was a wannabee. The truly sadistically vicious don’t have to go around dressing like Steven Seagal to stoke fear. One look in their eyes and you know to step aside. And as for the little guy, well, would he have frightened you?

  “So, gentlemen,” I said. “What is this problem you were telling me about?”

  “Harassment,” said the man in black.

  “Well, actually, that’s a specialty of our firm. My partner, Elizabeth Derringer, is one of the top sexual harassment lawyers in the city. The surreptitious pat on the butt, the sexual double entendre, the sly brush of protruding body parts as your boss passes you in the hall, the inappropriate suggestion of an after-hours liaison. It’s a terrible problem, yes, but there are laws now under which we can bring suits. Even the stolen kiss in the supply closet, once the province of harmless office fun, has now become actionable. And quite profitable too for the plaintiff and the lawyer. So,” I said with a wide smile. “Which one of you was sexually harassed?”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about,” said the man in black.

  “No? So what is it? An old girlfriend calling every night? Being stalked by a secret admirer? I want to help.” I roughed my voice a bit. “I just need to know what your problem is.”

  “You’re pretty clever, Mr. Carl, aren’t you?” said the man in black.

  “With enough rewrites, sure,” I said.

  “Well quit the cleverness and shut up.”

  “A child has died,” skirled the short man with the beard. “She was a sweet and much-loved child. I find tragedies bring out the best and the worst in us, don’t you, Victor? My name is Gaylord. This is Nicholas. The tragedy of this child’s death has raised a problem for us that you are going to resolve.”

  “Well, as you must know, I take a keen professional interest in other people’s tragedy.”

  “That’s exactly the problem,” said Gaylord.

  “We don’t want you interested in the tragedy of this child’s death,” said Nicholas in his husky whisper.

  “All right, gentlemen, let’s stop the playacting,” I said, more curious than anything else. “Who are we talking about and what do you want?”

  “You’ve been asking questions about Jacqueline Shaw’s death,” said Gaylord, shaking his head and closing his psychiatrist eyes as if with sadness. “Her death has caused us all much pain and we are trying to put the grief of her loss behind us. Your running around the city like a fool, badgering the police, bothering her friends, is only making it more difficult for our wounds to heal. You are to stop immediately.”

  I waited a moment and looked at them, the little squeak of a man and the fraud hard guy in a ponytail, and my only emotion was a sort of indignation that the likes of these two thought they could intimidate me. Didn’t they check me out in Martindale-Hubbell, didn’t they ask around, didn’t they know that with one call to certain of my clients I could have their knees pounded into mash? I leaned forward and clasped my hands together like a choirboy and said what I had to say slowly.

  “Listen, you little weenies, don’t you ever again frighten my secretary by ignoring her requests and marching into my office uninvited. Don’t you ever again try to play the hard guy with me when neither of you have the stones to pull it off. And don’t either of you ever again, for an instant, think that I will listen to any orders that come out of pathetic losers such as yourselves. Whatever work I’m doing for my clients I will do no matter what you or anyone else says to me and whether I am or am not looking into the death of this friend of yours, whatever her name is, I will continue to do whatever I was doing before your pathetic attempt to scare me off. Now that we are finished here, get the hell out of my office.”

  They both remained seated, staring at me with not quite the shocked and wary eyes I had hoped for. Gaylord started shaking his head and as he did so Nicholas rose. He pushed back his chair, swooped his arms before him and lifted his left knee. He stayed motionless for a moment, his left leg raised, his left arm before him like a shield, his right arm at his side, his stance as ludicrous and as far from threatening as if he froze smack in the middle of a power walk. I think I snickered.

  “I believe you underestimate our sincerity,” said Gaylord. “It happens.”

  In that instant Nicholas hopped into his left leg as he swung his right around, cracking the heavy vase atop the filing cabinet in two with his kick before it shattered against the wall. The shards of glass hadn’t hit the floor before, with a grunt and another spin, Nicholas pivoted off his right foot and buried his left heel into the side of my fireproof, batterproof, burglarproof, heavy-gauge steel filing cabinet. The concaving of the cabinet was punctuated with the slam bang of his heel against the side and the groan of bending metal, not unlike, I expect, the sound of the cracking of bones. From the force of his blow the lock popped and one of the drawers slid open.

  By the time Ellie had rushed in to see what had happened, Nicholas was back in his seat, hands folded before him, and I was suddenly suitably frightened.

  “It’s all right, Ellie,” I said, without looking at her so she wouldn’t notice my watering eyes. “Just a small accident with the cabinet. Everything’s fine.” I smiled thinly and she left, leaving the door open.

  “Sometimes you walk down the street,” said Gaylord, “without realizing, until it is too late, that the fellow approaching you has the ability to reach into your chest and rip out your lungs.”

  “I trained in Chiang Mai,” whispered Nicholas.

  “You know, Victor, I think I killed you in a prior life,” said Gaylord. “Were you by any chance in Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century when Godfrey of Bouillon stormed the city? Because your aura is very familiar.”

  I still hadn’t recovered enough from the shot into the solar plexus of my filing cabinet, wondering at what a shot like that would do to my rib cage and the oh so delicate organs encased within, to start exploring my past lives with Gaylord. The image of my heart compressing to the flatness of a plate, my lungs exhaling first air, then blood, then bronchioles, alveoli snapping, my colon popping like a pea, such images tended to wipe out all thoughts of the hereafter with obsessions of the dangers in the here and now. I was breathing hard when I said, “What is it exactly that you want?”

  Nicholas, for the first time, smiled. I couldn’t help but notice that his smile was excellent and he still had all his teeth. “No more questions about Jacqueline Shaw. That’s what we want.”

  “I seem to remember that I sliced off your head with my broadsword,” said Gaylord. “Does that ring a bell?”

  “Being beheaded by a midget in Jerusalem? Not reall
y.”

  “You scoff. Did you ever think there may be more to life than you imagine, more than eating and screwing and dying?” asked Gaylord. “Did that ever cross your mind?”

  “Well, I do watch a lot of TV.”

  “I’m talking existence, Victor. Have you ever wondered if your existence embodies more than you could ever imagine? Or maybe even, more profoundly, less?”

  “Metaphysics in the afternoon?”

  “I hate that word, metaphysics,” said Gaylord, “as if the truths in our souls are less real than the forces at work on pool balls clacking against one another. Let’s say we’re talking about a higher level of cognition. Any ideas?”

  “Meaning. You’re asking me about meaning.” I was vamping for time, trying to figure out where this high-pitched little man was going. “Let’s say I’m still searching for an answer to that one.”

  “Did you hear that, Nicholas? Victor here is searching. He is at least a one. There is hope for him yet.”

  “If he ever wants to become a two then he’ll cooperate,” said Nicholas. “This was just a warning but…”

  “This supposed meaning of life you are searching for, Vic,” said Gaylord, his high voice piercing Nicholas’s husky whisper like a dart, “any idea of where you’re going to find it?”

  “I read some, talk to people, watch Woody Allen movies. In the past few years my private investigator has sort of been a spiritual adviser.”

  “Your private investigator, how clever. You’ve hired him to investigate the meaning of life, I presume.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You ever wonder, Victor, if the answer is right out there for you to see? Ever have a coincidence happen that seemed too perfect for coincidence? Ever have a déjà vu and be certain that it wasn’t just a trick of the mind? Ever feel almost connected to the secret of the universe, feel that the answer to everything is just out of reach, or just out of sight? Ever think everything is so close except you are deaf to it for some strange reason?”

  “Yes, actually,” I said, because I had actually experienced all that.

  “Wonder of wonders,” said Gaylord. “You’re a two.”